Tag Archives: gaming

Blizzard Entertainment has released the title of their next Warcraft expansion. World of Warcraft: Legion will build on the long-time conflict with Burning Legion, which has been revived with the current expansion, Warlords of Draenor.

Announced just days after the reveal that subscriptions are at their lowest point since December of 2005 with 5.6 million active subscribers (this includes players who buy their game time with in-game currency), this is a much-needed publicity boost to the famous franchise now approaching its 11th year. The absence of Warcraft front man Chris Metzen from the presentation has been noted and speculated on at length already.

Blizzard seems to have responded to many customer complaints regarding Warlords of Draenor and the past few expansions. Orcs were almost entirely absent from the announcement, the PvP system seems to be getting a massive and much-needed overhaul, dungeons are promised to be making a comeback, weapons will get talent trees and customization options, and transmog will no longer take up bag space.

Demon Hunters are the talk of the Warcraft community right now. This hero class, only the second ever added to the game, will be elf-exclusive and have abilities that are already causing a buzz. The ability to double jump, glide, and see stealthed enemies (as well as those behind objects) is major. It remains to be seen what effect this class will have on PvP. They will also be unique among Warcraft classes in that they are being introduced with only two specs: one for tanking and one for DPS.

The much-lambasted Garrisons have been replaced with Class Halls, returning to a much-requested emphasis on player class flavor. It’s a bit disappointing that true player housing seems further from becoming a reality, but the Class Halls are hopefully a vast improvement over garrisons.

One of the most controversial reveals is artifact weapons. The wording is a little hazy and I don’t believe anything has been confirmed, but people are speculating that the new artifact weapon–one per spec–are the only weapons that will drop in end-game content. Instead of upgrading to different weapons, the emphasis seems to be upgrading one weapon multiple times, personalizing it, and choosing talents for it.

While there have been complaints that this is “lazy” on Blizz’s part instead of offering more weapons, I’m very excited for it. I’ve always felt that replacing a weapon multiple times in one expansion cheapens them and really breaks immersion. A quest chain to retrieve your weapon, upgrading it, making choices about how you use it, etc are much better options for an RPG.

Finally, there is a lot going on in the lore department. Illidan, Maeiv and Gul’dan are back, and Dalaran is going to be the new hub for both factions, suggesting that the Blood Elf purge is being reversed before it was ever reflected in game. Jaina is mysteriously absent and seems to have been replaced by Khadgar. There is much speculation about the potential for character death, including Sylvanas, Varian, Thrall, among others, with varying levels of likelihood.

All in all I’m very excited about the new expansion. World of Warcraft: Legion will go into beta testing this year, with the actual launch happening some time in mid 2016. More news is sure to come from this year’s BlizzCon in early November which I’m happy to be attending this year. Stay tuned for updates.

Firefly Online gave us some tidbits at the annual San Diego Comic Con this year. Overall the presentation was a mixed bag containing both interesting news and some very disappointing reveals.

The entire original cast is returning to reprise their roles, and Wil Wheaton is voicing the male player character. The unfortunate news is that much of the original cast’s cut-scene dialog tried a little too hard to recapture the Whedonisms that made the original so charming. The execution comes off almost like a parody of the original Western-inspired dialog, aiming to cram in as much “Firefly speak” into a few lines as possible. It’s a bit cringe-worthy and hopefully the devs dial it down in future cut-scenes and NPC dialog.

The opening scenes were actually a bit hard to follow; the player character starts out as part of a crew who have some sort of pre-arranged rendezvous with the Firefly cast. The job goes sour, resulting in a weapons-drawn standoff with the old heroes. Simple enough, until some poorly executed and confusing flashbacks with Federation interrogators looking for River and Simon Tam start muddling things.

On the plus side, the devs seem to have some good ideas about balancing the need for nostalgia with moving the story forward. They stated clearly that the goal was to progress and make the lore grow rather than try to rehash what has already been established. Ideally they should have kept that in mind with the opening cinematic, but I won’t write off the entire game based on the first few cut-scenes.

The music was absolutely beautiful and captured the spirit of the show perfectly, and the audience was treated to a live performance. An entire album’s worth of music has already been written, though no release date was hinted at.

Character creation boasts several sliders for customization. We only got a very quick peek so there’s not a lot of details about how many options there are. There’s also a first mate customization screen and the player evidently collects crew members as the game progresses.

Supposedly the world experience will change dynamically for everyone based on the actions of player-characters, but no specifics were forthcoming.

The most unfortunate aspects of Firefly Online are the combat system and movement. Owing to the fact that this game was built from the ground up to revolve around smartphones and tablets, the combat is turn-based and extremely simplistic. The example we saw featured the dev select a target, run behind the target–who simply continued staring off in the wrong direction with no attempt to block or attack–and shoot him in the back. I’d like to be optimistic and assume that combat mechanics will grow in complexity as the player levels, but there was an ominous lack of anyone even hinting at dungeons or raids.

The movement is obviously first and foremost designed to be touch-screen friendly; tap where you want to run, a giant blue circle appears on the ground where you’re moving to, and the character lumbers towards it. Firefly Online lacks the fluidity of any major MMO I’ve ever played.

An audience member did ask about the gameplay being scaled down to accommodate mobile gaming but the issue was mostly sidestepped with very vague assurances.

Finally, the devs stated they regretted ever trying to give firm release dates in the past and said that no ETA for release was going to be given in the near future. There are no plans for paid early-access sales; rather a free beta with rolling invites will become available at some point in the future. Their goal is not to accept any money until they have a finished game to release.

Like this:

I had such high hopes for Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress. But instead of a fun, cheeky look at the world of D&D through the eyes of a girl, I got an appalling mess of tacky stereotypes paraded out as ‘humor.’

I tried to quell my misgivings; I hate to give up on a book I’ve anticipated reading for a long time. So, despite the fact that the book opened with her whining that her gamer boyfriend didn’t bail on his friends to spend an hour or two in rush-hour traffic to come change her tire (and, like, OMG, didn’t he understand she was wearing WHITE PANTS!!1!one), because apparently the fairer sex can neither operate a tire iron nor figure out how to call AAA, I kept plodding along.

My misgivings increased as she described her job at Wizards of the Coast, and complained that there was no one to “commiserate with” about how weird and nerdy everything was, and how she had to “endure” her coworkers talking about aspects of gaming (Side note: Who in the sphincter of hell is in charge of hiring at Wizards of the Coast?). Ugh, a guy came to work dressed up as a Stormtrooper, and nobody else wanted to talk about what a weirdo he was. Poor her.

Not content to confine the offensive attitude to her own beliefs, she included a questionnaire answered by her five closest friends, where they proceeded to espouse how creepy and sad they thought D&D players were. Beating a dead horse seems to be the author’s strong point, because she couldn’t seem to quickly address stereotypes about D&D players and move on to, you know, the game she was supposedly writing about. Instead she chose focus on how much the world looks down on the lil’ cave-dwelling, neck-bearded, grimy losers before eventually tossing in a few condescending acknowledgements that they’re not all like that.

In the middle of her tolerance speech about how people should embrace stereotypical gamers instead of trying to change them (generous of her, I guess…?), she refers to nerds as “socially retarded.” That’s the part of the book where she’s trying really hard to encourage people not to look down on gamers. Her attempt to wear a Dungeons & Dragons shirt in public ends with her getting embarrassed after less than an hour (like, ew, people think I’m one of those creepy basement dwellers!) and asking to borrow a friend’s sweater.

Then there are the nonsensical ramblings about shoes and lipstick that leave the reader scratching their head and wondering what it all has to do with the game. Her explanation on gearing up a character is derailed by a discussion about how her character is buying Jimmy Choos at Nordstrom while everyone else is buying weapons.

But I think it would be best if I gave you examples of the content, and let you judge for yourself if this book seems like it would help you learn to play Dungeons & Dragons:

“Sorry, ladies, there are no bonus points for being able to walk in heels over cobblestones or remembering the anniversary of the day your best friend’s divorce was final. There are no deductions for clumpy mascara or visible panty lines. Come to think of it, maybe there should be.”

“Prior to my first game, I spent some quality time with Teddy creating my character. By “creating my character,” I mean using my mechanical pencil to twist my hair into an updo and building some Stonehenge-like creations with twenty-sided dice, while Teddy filled out my character sheet.”

“Picture a star who could remove her toenail polish with hundred dollar bills if she were someone who actually took care of her own toes. This person hates to see nurses and lunch ladies go without cashmere hoodies and MP3 players. If she’s feeling frisky, she might buy you and 349 of your neighbors a brand new Pontiac. But watch it–if she’s feeling wronged, she won’t think twice about outing you on national television. Don’t mess with a Lawful Good celeb.”

“Poor Ursula had a hard time finding scale armor. Yuck. That stuff is so unflattering and it’s almost impossible to find scale mail leggins in her size. Nobody makes a decent pair with a twenty-two inch inseam. I gave her the name of my seamstress.”

Here’s the thing. I know lots of lady geeks who manage to blend geeky and “girly” in a way that doesn’t insult anyone’s intelligence or completely detract from the subject they’re writing about. Shelly Mazzanoble is not one of these ladies. She took an idea that could have worked if it was handled a bit better and just flailed around creating an unreadable mess. At every turn the actual subject matter (the game) was preempted and shoved to the background to make room for yet another joke about lipstick, handbags, and designer shoes.

If the goal of Wizards of the Coast was to make this girl throw up her hands in defeat and buy a book on playing Warcraft instead of Dungeons & Dragons, they succeeded.